Andrew O'Neill
Moderator
It is useful, especially when tray processing multiple sheets of film, to eliminate the chance of them sticking together.
Because it's an hard-to-die practice of no usefulness. Please trust Ilford on that.
Alessandro - why would I blindly trust Ilford on that point when, over and over again, I proven just the opposite to myself. I presoak - no problems; I don't, lots of problems. And I'm certain I'm not alone in that respect.
What problem is that?Yes, but it seems to me that people more often solve a problem by pre-soaking than introduce a problem by doing it.
Alessandro - why would I blindly trust Ilford on that point when, over and over again, I proven just the opposite to myself. I presoak - no problems; I don't, lots of problems. And I'm certain I'm not alone in that respect.
Because I know vastly less than Ilford does, and so we all I presume. I'm no photo engineer, no chemist to affirm that Ilford is suggesting some no-no practice. If Ilford (or Kodak or Foma or whoever else) suggests to not using a presoak phase it will suffice to me.
They don't know what they are talking about in this instance! The fact that they don't list any reasons is suspicious.
You're welcome to your own opinion, Alessandro... But keep in mind that quite a few of us have many years of experience with multiple kinds of films and development methods. For many of us, NOT presoaking was a factor in uneven development, not the other way around.
The point is to soak it long enough to be actually beneficial, like a couple minutes or so with agitation. Film-incorporated wetting agents might help in a rushed or automated workflow. That has been debated for decades. But when you're developing the film by typical home darkroom methods, a couple more minutes overall is no hardship at all.
Have you ever developed sheet film in trays via the shuffle method? In that case, not presoaking can lead to a disaster, with the sheets sticking to each other once they hit the developer, with the emulsion suddenly swelling.
This is B&W film we are discussing.Not all manufacturers embeds a wetting agent into the emulsion, or at least not the way Ilford does.
Also Kodak in their z131 manual advides not to presoak. I think presoaking in C41 line alters the swelling characteristic and diffusion of the first developer to a certain degree which is noticeable in the final image.
No commercial d&d machine has a presoak stage, in both c41 and e6 lines. And for a reason.
This is B&W film we are discussing.
This discussion reminds me of watching a (slow motion) car spinning out on ice. It's all over the place.
Also Kodak in their z131 manual advides not to presoak. I think presoaking in C41 line alters the swelling characteristic and diffusion of the first developer to a certain degree which is noticeable in the final image.
Automated dip n' dunk machines handle the film quite differently. So do roller transport mechanisms. I'm well aware of all that. But the predominant flavor of this thread seems to be about personal practices in darkrooms lacking that kind of machinery. I don't do my own E6 or C41 processing, and consign that to labs; but I do my own black and white processing as well as color print processing, and in each of those cases find a presoak mandatory. In the case of color print drums, the presoak not only allows the developer to spread more quickly and evenly, but preconditions the temperature of both the inside of the drum and the surface of the paper itself. Don't think that this hasn't been thoroughly tested.
And don't imagine that every recommendation that a particular film and paper manufacturer publishes has actually been tested by themselves. I know for a fact that there are exceptions because the official "expert" who wrote some of them personally told me so. Some of these recommendations are hypothetical. No, I'm not going to mention any specific names, lest this get into a shouting match. The main point is to test these kinds of variables for yourself; otherwise, you're just guessing.
In the case of dip n dunk machines and so forth, they issue their own instructions.
But, let me guess, you didn’t get that from Kodak and you never did a side-by-side comparison?
Yep…Without intent to be rude, but this is both a well-discussed and contraversial topic where discussions rarely end well.
No, I didn't feel the urge to waste precious and expensive film to do a side-by-side comparison since what Ilford or Kodak suggest me to do proved fine and never cause me any trouble.
But your advice to people that get streaking is to keep wasting their precious film even when pre-soaking solves the streaking problem and doesn’t change the development to go outside the control strip tolerance?
That's good, since nobody here said they know better than Ilford and Kodak engineers.
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